Justin Phillip Reed visited Dawn Lundy Martin’s Studio in African American Poetry and Poetics class on September 25th.

In class Justin read poems from and talked about his first book of poems, Indecency, which won the National Book Award. He read recent poems and talked about current projects, and also how he continues to engage his imagination as a writer not associated with the academy, but instead working as a landscaper. Because the students had also recently read Cathy Park Hong’s essay “Delusions of Whiteness in the Avant Garde,” Justin also talked about his ideas of where he is positioned (or not) in the contemporary American poetry landscape, histories and trajectories. 

Justin Phillip Reed is an American writer and amateur bass guitarist. His preoccupations include horror cinema, ideological failure, and uses of the grotesque. He is the author of two poetry collections, The Malevolent Volume (2020) and Indecency (2018), both published by Coffee House Press. His hybrid collection, With Bloom Upon Them And Also With Blood: A Horror Miscellany, will be released on Halloween 2023. Born and raised in the Pee Dee region of South Carolina, he participates in alternative rock music cultures, ogles Toyota Tacomas, and enjoys smelling like outside. His favorite band is Oklahoma City’s Chat Pile.